This interface provides access to time series data for 21 key economic variables (see below for the full list) as originally published in each monthly edition of the MEI from February 1999 onwards. This real-time database will enable economists to perform real-time data analysis of econometric models and statisticians to study the magnitude and direction of subsequent revisions to published statistics.

So, the banking, finance and investment industry has taken advantage of our ignorance and made fools out of all of us. The politicians laughed in their sleeves and mocked us for not catching on, all the while in full knowledge of what was going on. And, you think I’m crazy?

I’m not the one that sunk hard-earned money into a 401K that is worth half its value now. I’m not the one who sold “securities” that were constructed on air with nothing to back them up. I’m not the one that borrowed money leveraged against them nor the one that sold them around the world.

I’m not the one who created a counterfeit form of US currency in the form of credit default swaps and complicated derivative products designed to get assets in return for nothing. I’m not the one who built businesses upon this nor that was in the enforcement business that should’ve stopped it. I’m not the one who ignored the international monetary commissions about correcting all this.

I’m not the one who acted like it would all be okay so long as everyone believes it is and keeps buying the worthless paper for more than the last person did. I’m not the one that it won’t hurt anybody or made the choice to refuse regulating or legislating appropriately for it.

How dare you tell me or anyone to relax, calm down and take a deep breath. Your games are foul. Your destruction of the very founding first principles of democracy and our capitalist system aren’t even sane.

As you’ve reduced our world respect and standing to a complete joke of arrogance and contempt for everything we stood for, you and your Wall Street buddies turn to blame everyone but yourselves. You can discredit what I may say about it all – how is that going to make any difference?

Our industries are a poor shadow of what is innovative in the world. Our stock market is a loose cannon imploding on its own corruption and greed. Our politicians warm unearned seats by their own self-serving complacency and willingness to sell every principle of America down the river to protect their own riches and positions of power.

Our voices aren’t heard, our interests aren’t protected and our representation in our government is extraordinarily lacking. The current planned bailouts and already consummated bailouts are evidence of a government serving the interests only of themselves and their rich friends. They want to force it to be done in a short period of time without any recourse through the courts if it turns out to be unconstitutional to have done it, such that no new administration elected by our choices could possibly ever interfere with protecting their friends’ interests.

This isn’t about a feeling of confidence, mood or emotion. The lies upon which our current markets rest are depleting the valued resources which once represented something. Now they don’t offer jobs or job growth, nor secured tangible assets nor, in fact do they stand on or offer anything to the American people.

Our nationalization of a private company without so much as a consideration by our representatives in Congress undermined the Constitutional basis of our government and the capitalist principles of our economy. And, you would judge me to be the crazy one?

Around the world, there is disgust and dismay for the corruption of the economic system and the current behavior of our government concerning it. The financial industries and US government financial branches were warned ahead of time to correct the accounting abnormalities, resolve the unsecured debt instruments being packaged and resold, fix the unregulated “insurance” business of derivatives and their complex bond default swaps, and told that to not do so threatened the stability of the global markets and monetary systems.

Look around the world, they are mocking us as our diplomats and state department officials seek to push our policies of free market economy and representative democratic government on others. While we are using socialist, communist and dictatorial policies and practices in this and other eminent situations, the rest of the world is dropping their level of willingness to put up with America and the arrogance of demands for others to conform to a model the US isn’t honoring.

As homeowners across the United States have lost their jobs and homes, where do we find the stories of their “new lives” in tent cities, campgrounds, parking lots and streets across America? Is it in our press with our precious freedom of the press and rights to freedom of speech? No, – it’s only made public in other countries where there is a willingness to show the New Great Depression in America with their contempt about our complete refusal to address it at all.

When the stock market and US economy was actually in grave danger earlier this year, did the US press cover the reality of the situation where solutions could be given and created? Of course not, out of deference to the superstition that to tell the truth of the situation would somehow make it so.

In fact, until the reality could no longer be avoided as a negative evident to everyone, there were still “experts” saying it was all alright and simply a “bubble”. With a dollar worth little more than ten cents in 1976 money based on its actual ability to buy something, the “experts” continued to say that there was not a problem. And the US government insisted it would all be okay.

Now – who is living in a deluded fantasy land? Is it me or the people who’ve lost the equity in their own homes and can’t sell them for the money owed on them? Or the people trying to get gasoline for cars they can no longer afford now that their credit cards are maxed out? Or the people that are applying for jobs where 78,000 other applicants are vying for the same job that think there will be a job for them “right around the corner”?

When you’ve had the position as a decision-maker in all this – how is it you figured that doing whatever Wall street friends thought was best would work out? Didn’t it occur to you that anything which requires “confidence” to keep its value is a con game intended to profit for no real return? It was a con game. We were had. They got away with it. There is nothing but air backing it up. Countries around the world are realizing they got “had” too. What did you think would happen? It was a con.

Written by Cricket Diane C “Sparky” Phillips, 09-22-08, USA

It doesn’t matter if everyone on the Hill, and on the Street are in on the game – its still a con built on lies.